Joint modeling and experimental work by the US Army Research Laboratory and the Georgia Institute of Technology is focused on the development of batteries that improve the safety and energy density of ones currently found on the battlefield, and is featured on the cover of the prestigious Advanced Energy Materials journal.
The cover image is an artistic impression of the process of nuclear excitation by electron capture. A highly stripped ion, illustrated here as an atomic nucleus with a single orbiting electron, captures an incident electron into a vacant orbit. Under the right conditions, this capture transfers a small amount of energy into the nucleus, which subsequently emits a much larger amount of energy in the form of gamma rays.